The Arab Youth Bulge and the Parliamentarians

More than ever before, the Arab region now registers an unprecedented youth population growth while facing huge challenges such as extremely high unemployment rates --more than half of all regional jobless population--, and inadequate education and health provision, in particular among young women.

Reforming the International Financial System

When we fail to act on lessons from a crisis, we risk exposing ourselves to another one. The 1997-1998 East Asian crises provided major lessons for international financial reform. Two decades later, we appear not to have done much about them. The way the West first responded to the 2008 global financial crisis should have reminded us to do more. But besides accumulating more reserves, Southeast Asia has not done much else.

2 Billion People Don’t Have Access To Clean Water, Opens up Fissures of Inequality

More than two billion people lack access to clean and safe drinking water, according to a new report released by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

We Have to Reclaim the Public Policy Space for SDGs

At the High-Level Political Forum which currently takes place at the United Nations in New York several events, for instance a SDG Business Forum, are devoted to the critical role of business and public-private partnerships (PPPs) in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Little Suns

“It looks like a flower, I like it!” 16-year-old Kaira smiles as she opens the box containing her solar lamp. Examining it carefully, she pushes the button on one of the petals, turning on its bright light. Kaira is one of the 1,265 women and girls, who received a solar lamp from IOM, the UN Migration Agency, in Ethiopia’s Somali Region, through a partnership with Little Sun.

G20 Becomes G19 on Climate Change

The G20 meeting of leaders of the world's 20 biggest economies ended a few days ago in Hamburg, Germany with a strong statement of commitment for implementing the Paris Agreement on Climate Change by 19 of the leaders, with the exception of President Trump who has decided to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.

Communities Step Up to Help Save Jamaica’s Forests

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 31.1 percent or about 337,000 hectares of Jamaica is forested. Of this, 26.1 percent or 88,000 is classified as primary forest, the most biodiverse and carbon-dense form of forest.

Nuclear Ban Approved, Now What?

More than seven decades after the deployment of deadly atomic bombs in Japan, the UN has passed a historic treaty banning nuclear weapons around the world. Though it has sparked hope for a future without nuclear weapons, uncertainty in the success of the treaty still lingers.

Argentina Plans Billions of Dollars in Railway Projects

Development in Argentina in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was closely tied to that of the railway. The eighth largest country in the world, Argentina’s economy grew through exporting agricultural and livestock products, and the railways were key to founding centres of population and transporting goods to the ports.

Promoting Sustainable Population Growth, Key to Raising Human Rights Standards

The world population has witnessed a remarkable growth during the recent decades. In 1965, it stood at 3.3 billion people. In 2017 –52 years later-- the global population reached a staggering 7.5 billion people corresponding to more than a doubling of the Earth’s residents over the last half-century.

The Lost Boys: Gabriel

“I thought that I couldn’t fulfill my dreams if I stayed in Sierra Leone. Mauritania is known to us as a country with a lot of history and knowledge. For a child who does not have his or her father or mother or a member of his family there, it is not easy to integrate.

For India’s Urban Marginalized, Reproductive Healthcare Still a Distant Dream

In a semi-lit room of a southern Chennai neighborhood, a group of women sit in a circle around a table surrounded by large cardboard boxes of "Nirodh" – India’s most popular condom.

Will the UN “Leave No One Behind” and Improve LGBTI Health and Well-Being?

While there has been progress in researching the health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people and responding to certain emerging health threats in high-income countries - elsewhere in the world such research is inadequate and incomplete.

Three-Zone Biosecurity Offers New Hope to Indonesian Farmers

Poultry farmer Bambang Sutrisno Setiawan had long heard about biosecurity but never gave serious thought to it, even when the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 forced him to cull thousands of his layer chickens in 2003 and 2009.

Modi’s American Embrace

The widely circulated picture of Indian Prime Minister Modi clinging to a visibly uncomfortable Donald Trump`s breast illustrates the nature of the emerging relationship between India and the US.

Mexico’s Methane Emissions Threaten the Environment

Mexico is in transition towards commercial exploitation of its shale gas, which is being included in two auctions of 24 hydrocarbon blocks, at a time when the country is having difficulty preventing and reducing industrial methane emissions.

New Neocon Mantra: Iran, like Soviet Union, on Verge of Collapse

Iran hawks suddenly have a new mantra: the Islamic Republic is the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, and the Trump administration should work to hasten the regime’s impending collapse.

Climate Change-Poverty-Migration: The New, Inhuman ‘Bermuda Triangle’

World organisations, experts and scientists have been repeating it to satiety: climate change poses a major risk to the poorest rural populations in developing countries, dangerously threatening their lives and livelihoods and thus forcing them to migrate.

G20’s Record Does Not Inspire Hope

The G20 leaders meeting in Hamburg, Germany, on 7-8 July comes almost a decade after the grouping’s elevation to meeting at the heads of state/government level. Previously, the G20 had been an informal forum of finance ministers and central bank governors from advanced and emerging economies created in 1999 following the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

Crisis in Korea: Diplomacy Misdirected

US President Trump has expressed increasing impatience with the diplomacy of patience that the United States has followed since the Obama presidency with regard to North Korea’s nuclear and missile build-up. If China is not able to induce North Korea to give up making an intercontinental ballistic missile tipped with a nuclear weapon that can reach Washington, D. C., Trump has warned, the US is ready to address the situation by its lonesome, laying all its terrible options on the table.